Extracting nicotine from tobacco

[MNZ]

For all his working live my father worked in the tobacco industry, he is an industrial chemist. I'm going to talk with him in depth about e-smoking and about methods of making my own juice.
I like the ideas other are using now, that is to extract nicotine from ready to smoke product, but I also want to see if it is a viable option to extract nicotine from home grown tobacco plants. If what we are trying obtain is just nicotine, that might very well be an alternative. Flavouring could be simply added by using food flavours, bickfords for example or similar.

I'll update as I get more information and keep you all informed of any trials I make.

What I'm hoping will come of this is a relatively straight forward method we can easily make use of

If what I suspect will happen here in New Zealand does come to pass, that is the anti everythings get their way, it might mean I can no longer import any e-smoking related products at all and will need to become completely independant.

Maybe the electro techs, engineers etc out there might like to begin thinking about ways of making a home made e-smoker. Realistically they are a fairly simple device, it's a heater coil onto which the juice is deposited and turned into vapour. Without actual knowledge I'd suspect the heater coil is nichrome wire, which isn't hard to get and isn't overly expensive to buy. The complex bits of current e-smokers are the electronics that control the current flow to the coil, but a simple press to use switch could easily replace that as we have already seen being used in the manual versions of the kiss box. The thing is going to be making something that is self contained and readily portable, I very much doubt it's going to end up looking like a cigarette or cigar, but time will tell.

[TropicalBob]

Excellent. Do keep us posted because our country might not be far behind yours in banning these -- particularly the liquids and cartridges. Independence would be essential.

Many pipe smokers in America see tobacco becoming unavailable in the not-too-distant future. Many are buying and hoarding huge quantities (probably as good a futures bet as crude oil!). Some are learning to grow their own (this is not very realistic for most).

And, as for extracting nicotine, a problem will be measuring the strength of the extracted substance. Perhaps your dad knows how that can be done without a Dow Chemical-size laboratory.

[dnakr]

This would be wonderful if we could get an easy recipe to follow.

I agree with TB:

Do keep us posted because our country might not be far behind yours in banning these -- particularly the liquids and cartridges

Hopefully before this happens we have a way of doing this.

[Gunny]

MNZ, What did you find out?

[toekuttr]

I just noticed this thread. An easy to follow recipe sounds great, some of the methods I've read about are intimidating to say the least. According to some material I've read, solvents might be required to leach out an adequate quantity for effective concentrates. Theres also a variety of tobacco named Rustica or "Indian Tobacco" which is I understand is mostly used for the express purpose of nic extraction (mainly insecticides and Pharmaceuticals) that might be effective for e-concentrates as well. I imagine that would need to be home-grown, at least I can't find any leaf for sale. Definitely some interested parties here MNZ.

[MNZ]

I haven't been able to talk to him about this yet, but next weekend (26th July) I'll seeing him for his birthday party ... He lives in a different part of NZ to me, that's when I'll be able to talk to him about this in detail.

[TropicalBob]

As I popped a portion snus in my mouth this morning, it dawned on me that we home brewers are filtering the tobacco at the wrong stage.

Duh. Think of it this way:

What if you put ground-up tea in a pot, covered it with water and cooked out the tea flavor, then strained your stuff through a coffee filter? You'd have the mess we have after cooking tobacco. So an answer, maybe, might be to put tobacco in reusable tea bags (widely sold) and use those just as we would to brew tea. Cover with water and simmer out the goodness!

I intend to try this next batch.

Also found out how rose water is made. This could be done to create tobacco water. Just substitute tobacco for rose and see what we get:

1. In the center of a large pot (the speckled blue canning pots are ideal) with an inverted lid (a rounded lid), place a fireplace brick. On top of the brick place the bowl. Put the roses in the pot; add enough flowers to reach the top of the brick. Pour in just enough water to cover the roses. The water should be just above the top of the brick.

2. Place the lid upside down on the pot. Turn on the stove and bring the water to a rolling boil, then lower heat to a slow steady simmer. As soon as the water begins to boil, toss two or three trays of ice cubes (or a bag of ice) on top of the lid.

3. You’ve now created a home still! As the water boils the steam rises, hits the top of the cold lid, and condenses. As it condenses it flows to the center of the lid and drops into the bowl. Every 20 minutes, quickly lift the lid and take out a tablespoon or two of the rose water. It’s time to stop when you have between a pint and a quart of water that smells and tastes strongly like roses.

Course, this has to be scaled way down for tobacco distillation. Three-inch diameter mini-pot, etc. We want drops, not quarts, of liquid. May try this distillation process if the tea bag idea goes bad.

My goal is particulate-free tobacco essence fluid.

[Nazareth]

MNZ- I'll test your prototype atomizers if they will fit a SmartFixx penstyle (it's basically hte same as an NJoy)- gotta make it just like ya said- manual- just drop the 'auto-sensor' completely out of it - go for a design very similar to the loongtotem- that seems to be hte ticket so far

anyone have al ink to that diagram someone drew up of an atomizer? I can't find hte drawing-

[TropicalBob]

Wrong thread. We do have an atomizer thread somewhere, though. Lord, we need separate thread for these multiple interests, don't we?

[MacFan]

Originally Posted by TropicalBob

As I popped a portion snus in my mouth this morning, it dawned on me that we home brewers are filtering the tobacco at the wrong stage.

Duh. Think of it this way:

What if you put ground-up tea in a pot, covered it with water and cooked out the tea flavor, then strained your stuff through a coffee filter? You'd have the mess we have after cooking tobacco. So an answer, maybe, might be to put tobacco in reusable tea bags (widely sold) and use those just as we would to brew tea. Cover with water and simmer out the goodness!

I intend to try this next batch.

Also found out how rose water is made. This could be done to create tobacco water. Just substitute tobacco for rose and see what we get:

1. In the center of a large pot (the speckled blue canning pots are ideal) with an inverted lid (a rounded lid), place a fireplace brick. On top of the brick place the bowl. Put the roses in the pot; add enough flowers to reach the top of the brick. Pour in just enough water to cover the roses. The water should be just above the top of the brick.

2. Place the lid upside down on the pot. Turn on the stove and bring the water to a rolling boil, then lower heat to a slow steady simmer. As soon as the water begins to boil, toss two or three trays of ice cubes (or a bag of ice) on top of the lid.

3. You’ve now created a home still! As the water boils the steam rises, hits the top of the cold lid, and condenses. As it condenses it flows to the center of the lid and drops into the bowl. Every 20 minutes, quickly lift the lid and take out a tablespoon or two of the rose water. It’s time to stop when you have between a pint and a quart of water that smells and tastes strongly like roses.

Course, this has to be scaled way down for tobacco distillation. Three-inch diameter mini-pot, etc. We want drops, not quarts, of liquid. May try this distillation process if the tea bag idea goes bad.

My goal is particulate-free tobacco essence fluid.

TB,
I've heard you refer to snus before...I'm curious, can you tell me what they are?